A Black Woodpecker takes care of his newly hatched chicks in Cheolwon-gun, north of Seoul, South Korea. The Black Woodpecker lives in mature forest across the northern palearctic. The plumage of this crow-sized woodpecker is entirely black apart from a red crown. In males, the entire crown is red, but in females only the hindcrown.

Brown bear Taquoka plays with a log in a pond in his enclosure at Alaska Wildlife Conservation Center in Portage, Alaska. Taquoka, a 2-year-old male brown bear at the Alaska Wildlife Conservation Center, will began a trip to his new home in Sweden.

A herd of Sri Lankan elephants are led to their daily bath at the nearby river of the Pinnawela Elephant Orphanage in Kegalla, Sri Lanka. The first ever of its kind, the Pinnawela orphanage was established to care for five orphaned wild elephants in Sri Lanka in 1975. Currently it is home to 83 pachyderms of which 50 are females and 23 are males.

A sand dune lizard is seen in Chaves County, N.M. A contentious battle over the rare lizard found only in New Mexico and West Texas' oil and gas country has taken a surprising turn with federal officials deciding not to bestow endangered species protections on the small reptile.